New story for Fiction Fridays 😀 I’ll update this every week, one page per entry. That’s all I can come up with, weekly, I think.  Romance, of course; I can’t seem to write anything else.  

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Part I:

I shall now be retiring.

For the first time in sixty years, I shall now have another place to call home, apart from the Church.  It’s been a full life, one that I do not regret living, but still one that had been particularly trying.  I had the option of staying here, of course, but now I just wanted to spend my last few remaining years here on earth with my family.

As is with most people in this country, I grew up in a life of poverty.  My parents had not been the luckiest of creatures, my mother being a public school teacher and my father a tricycle driver.  And being the fourth child of seven children certainly didn’t help at all.  Thankfully, when I was eleven, a distant aunt who resided in America agreed to shoulder the expenses of my education, granted, of course, that I should enter the seminary right away and become a priest.  Apparently this particular aunt had been childless and had always fancied herself to be a patron of the clergy. 

My parents, having no other choice, agreed to the terms.  I was asked, but it was more for formality’s sake than anything.  They (because obviously I had no say in my life at the time) decided to let me finish sixth grade at my hometown before moving me to a high school seminary in Manila.  Truthfully that probably had been the worst year of my life; there are no words that can possibly describe the feeling of waking up in your own bed, seeing the people you’ve grown up with and yet knowing that you’ll be leaving them for an unknown amount of time.  My parents and siblings all treated me like I was dying.  I appreciated the extra attention, I really did, but with every additional hug, I was reminded of my fate, of my exile.

When the time was up they all went with me to the bus station, making my departure feel more permanent.  Up to this day I distinctly remember my mother’s face, tears freely streaming down her face and telling me to “be a good boy” and to “not forget them”.  They were my family; there was nothing in this world that can make me forget that.

I grew up in the province, where carabaos and farms and Balete trees were considered the norm; to say that I was naïve was an understatement.  I literally had no idea what to expect, except that I was going to be studying in a school for priests.  The caretaker of the seminary, Mang Boy, was the one who fetched me from the bus station.  I remember him greeting me with a kind smile; he must’ve seen the petrified look on my face. 

The seminary was a massive (in my eyes) building built behind the ancient chapel.  It was a three-story brick structure that stretched down the entire length of the parish’s lot.  It was complete with everything that a student would need; classrooms and meditation rooms were on the first floor, the library and the mini auditorium on the second and the dormitories were on the third. 

My first month there, quite literally, had been hell.  I was stuck in a place where people barely understood what I said (the little Tagalog I knew, I spoke with a Bicolano accent) and the educational material was just far too advanced for my public-school-in-the-province education.  It had been a struggle to get up everyday at five-thirty in the morning to prepare for the six o’clock mass.  To top it all off, I missed my family severely. 

But one day I decided to harden my resolve.  I figured that this happened to me for a reason.  The chance of me having a better life could’ve just as easily been given to one of my brothers; after all, I had four of them. 

-To Be Continued-